syntagms_of_excessfandomcom-20200213-history
BODY, SENSES AND PHENOMENOLOGY
Syntagms of excess are intimately connected to all the senses, not only to sight and ear. The kinds of narrative of this caliber, are experience through the entire body, which channels and echoes what happens on the screen. The spectator embodies not only the characters, but the narrative tone, suffering pain or pleasure for what is depicted or concealed in front of him or her. '' (Lars von Trier, 2013)]] The fact that the storytelling results in a large and complex system, of multiple plots, altered temporalities and extreme length enhances more intense reactions in the audience. Linda Williams in Film Body: Genre, Gender and Excess analyzes melodrama, horror and pornography through the lens of excess. In a preliminary assertion she says that "there is a spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion" (Williams, 1991: 4), meaning that the body in the moment of excess through pleasure, pain, fear or ecstasy is the core of the narrative. Responding to what he or she sees on the screen, the spectator is caught up in an involuntary mimicry of the sensation of the body displayed, which is in the vast majority of the cases a female body. Williams argues that the more affected the body of the viewer is, the more successful the movie will be. It is not an exaggeration to draw a parallelism with the kinds of narratives that this wiki analyzes. One can definitely assure that in general, syntagms of excess tend to focus on the protagonists' body, through changes of appearance, nudity, scars, wounds, tattoos, etc. in order to make spectators empathize, or better said, embody the physical and emotional reactions. Vivian Sobchack's article What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthtetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh, is an attempt to articulate the validity of body sensations in film theory. She advocates for the recognition of a full-bodied vision. Building on phenomenology, she regards the film viewer as an all-perceiving subject, arguing that there is no primordial division between the psychological and the affective responses of the spectator's body and the mutations of the bodies on the screen. This fluidity is by all means more noticeable in films and TV series with a correlation between excess in the length and excess within the narrative. The body of the spectator, thereby, will be much more expose, according to Sobchack's logic when watching or (perceiving) a syntagms of excess. Sobchack names the body in the film experience the cinesthetic subject, which encompasses the concepts of synaesthesia (involuntary experience in which the stimulation of one sense cause a response in another) and conaesthesia (the perception of the body state as the sum of its somatic perceptions) (Sobchack, 2000: 61). Therefore the film viewer translates from the senses without any kind of cognitive interpreter. The experience is therefore prereflective. The application of phenomenology provides an interesting position from which to observe narratives. Sobchack's emphasis is on tactility, which can be a cinematic experience although the spectator does not touch or is touched by the cinema. Some graphic examples of this cinematic touch take place in Lars von Trier's ''Nymphomaniac''. The audience can experience how important is the touch for the protagonist, Joe, when she delicately senses an ash tree leaf or aggressively masturbates herself or one of her many lovers. Furthermore, touch is the sense to which the sequence about Joe's journey through masochism is addressed . The lashes, the slaps, but above all, the blood and marks in the woman's body after being wiped, are also strongly sensed in the cinesthetic subject who watches the film. In these intense moments, something that Sobchack defines as a rupture in the relational structure between the body on the screen and the body of the subject happens. The result is that the spectator turns away the head or covers his or her eyes. For the scholar, this occurs because the mind has intervened in the emotion rationalizing it, nevertheless, the sensation is irremediably imprinted in the body. In this respect, von Trier's movie is extremely "carnal" and fulfills the canon of Linda William's body genres. Another sense that is highlighted i n the film is the taste. In the first episode, Joe's describes, and the movie graphically shows, how she tastes S.'s semen after a blowjob on a train. For Seligman, the person to who is diegetically addressed Joe's narration, the combined flavor of the semen and the chocolate sweets triggers the woman's memory. This connection is a nod towards the Proustian's concept of sensitive memory. Works Cited: Sobchack, Vivian: “What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh” In Sobchack, Vivian: Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: California University Press, 2004. pp. 53-84 Williams, Linda: “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess”. In Film Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 4, Summer 1991. pp. 2-13 Category:Film Category:TV Series Category:TV Category:TV Shows Category:Body Category:Senses Category:Cinema Category:Linda Williams